Comrade Joseph Ajaero is President, United Labour Congress (ULC). He speaks to journalists at the just concluded ILO conference in Geneva, Switzerland. MOSES JOHN brings the details.
Insurgency in the North East
We don’t need a statement from the ILO to stop the carnage in the North east in form of Boko Haram and insurgency. What we need is a Nigeria solution to Nigeria problem and I think since President Muhammadu Buhari came into power, you can see a reasonable amount of seriousness in combating it. But it has left a lot of social challenges, migration issues, a lot of destitute that are there to be feed. people had lost there jobs in he cause of the carnage in the area.
Apart from that and the unemployment that is been manage, the lost of jobs should be more paramount in all our agitation, because if you employed 1000 new workers and you sack 5000, it doesn’t make any sense. The level of job insecurity in Nigeria should be a major concern, especially the multinationals who are importing Indian, Chinese to take over Nigerian jobs. The situation in the oil and gas, electricity and telecom sector is so rampant and is precarious work, because most jobs is been casualised.
If you said you are creating employment and such employment is not decent, we should bring this matter for the attention of ILO. That the jobs they are creating in Nigeria is such that people are using umbrella to sale credit cards, those are not jobs, when you talk of quality jobs. We should put attention on quality jobs and sustenance of the jobs that are in existence, in as much as new jobs would be created, we should put attention on the once in existence.
Social dialogue mechanism between the tripod.
I think we inherited a lot from the colonial governments in Nigeria which metamorphose to the various military governments we had. I believe in social dialogue and Nigeria preaches, it especially the government circle, but most often than not you notice that it is practice in breach. If you have a tripod that two legs are on one side, then you pity the other side. The tripod in case of Nigeria, the employers and government are usually on one side. In fact the two are employers which has make the other leg which is labour to be weak because whenever you have two legs on one side, the other leg will suffer. Government is both employer and regulator, the employers at times call the shot.
In such a situation you can’t say the tripod is standing effectively. But in the private sector you see that dictatorship of an employer when they hire, they decide not to pay, they don’t even go into collective bargaining, no condition of service can you say social dialogue exist in such sector?. In some states, the situation is the same, governors think they can hire and fire at will, there is no social dialogue is such areas. I think we have preach it and there is need to institutionalise and internalise it in our ways of life. When I mention the military, you know they believe in decrees and doing things with impunity and that is what most of our people adopted. This would take some time for us to shake ourselves from this situation we inherited from the colonial masters and the military.
Decent work in Nigeria
That was why I said we need Nigeria solution to Nigeria problems. The ILO looks at global standards which you discover we are not implementing in Nigeria. But I think there is no synergy between unions, the labour canters and civil society in trying to make sure that Nigeria comply to this policy.
But those who regulate labour matters in Nigerians seams to be sleeping. For example, this days we don’t have labour inspectors as we use to have then and that was why a huge number of people died in Ikorodu fire incident. This days people start their companies without labour inspectors, so Ministry of labour should intensify effort by engaging more labour inspectors so that all the standards required for employment will be there before people take up jobs. Because people are playing on the unemployment situation to advertise for jobs and you see millions of people applying for such jobs that would not be ready to comply with minimum wage requirement or safety standards.
Paris Club refund and non payment of salaries.
Is always a sad thing when you keep hearing workers in the public sector are not been pay including the pensioners who are been owed for 9 or 10months. Now the Paris refund is a sad one that we are still talking about non payment of salary.
Let me say that ULC is worried about it, you will recalled that in some states, we were able to push for payment of salary. We are committed to collaborating with NLC and TUC to see how to move the struggle forward and to also ensure workers in that sector who work so hard are paid their salaries.
I don’t think that if the Paris club money was given to governors and it was not judiciously used that the next option is to take loan to give to this same set of people. That will be clearly wrong. ULC is not subscribing to Nigeria taking loan to give to governors to pay workers especially as they have not accounted for what happened to the previous money.
Peace within the Labour unions
I thought that you would have pinned it down to a particular case of peace. I know that there is no kind of war within the Labour unions. I’m also aware that there is no one way of doing things. I know that even within families, people have different ideologies. The husband can be in one party and the wife in another. That is not crisis. That is not war. When the Minister was talking about the Palestinian issue, he was presenting Nigeria’s position that the crisis there should be resolved. If you knew when there was crisis in the Labour movement, you will see what is happening as a child play.
I will tell you that in Lagos state, there is crisis in NURTW and we are seeing the number of casualties on a daily basis. Even the crisis within the Labour movement that you are talking about, either in the NLC or TUC, I have not heard somebody slap another or using unprintable words. But I am aware that we decided to do things differently that will take care of people that are with us. In the states, there are people there who are civil servants that should address the issues that concerned them. I should understand that I should not be going to civil service union to do certain things if I am not invited.
That is to tell you that we recognise departmentalisation in the course of our jobs. I want to tell you that there is peace in terms of what is happening. Even in those days when government desk led NLC, we were coming up with joint action committees to take actions and if we have challenges now, we can still come together in issues that affects the worker. If you are referring to what happened during the fuel price increase, I think that by now, all of us would known what happened and it is not entirely a trade union issue.
ULC registration
The TUC had 27 years before they were registered. That is a process and they were resilient. Infact they had to change names several times. This is a process we started in December and we want to be peaceful about it. Between December and now is just six months and we have expressed anxiety on the delay. The last correspondence we.
Got before coming to ILO was that the process was still in place. I don’t think that we should now come with threat. Let me tell you that the ULC has what it takes to demand its registration within 48 hours and get it. But it would now mean that we are threatening the establishment. So, we will allow the process to take its course so that nobody will accuse you of being registered through the back door.
That is what we have done, being patient as we have been and that is why we are trying to avoid provocation. What I said now is not a threat, but we realize that we have to bend to the rules, do what we are asked to do and allow them to do their job even when it is going beyond time expected. So, patience is a virtue that we must all learn to imbibe.
